


Poetic Justice

by gulpsofoxygen



Category: Teen Wolf (TV)
Genre: Gen, M/M, Pre-Slash
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-07-20
Updated: 2012-07-20
Packaged: 2017-11-10 09:11:41
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,665
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/464625
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/gulpsofoxygen/pseuds/gulpsofoxygen
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Stiles doesn't need to believe in magic. It's enough that magic believes in him.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Poetic Justice

_“We are what we pretend to be, so we must be careful about what we pretend to be.”_  
Kurt Vonnegut

***

As Stiles tells his psychiatrist every Thursday at 6:30 PM, there is absolutely nothing interesting about being Stiles Stilinski. His father is a police chief of a very rural, uninteresting town where cops are primarily relied on to recapture escaped pets and mediate between parties in traffic accidents. He takes forty milligrams of Adderall twice a day to decrease his hyperactivity. He has a best friend who is thick as two bricks but still manages to scrape a B in all but the hardest of their classes. Life is normal, fine, and he doesn't _actually_ require her services, thank you very much.

"Your grades aren't very good either," she says, adjusting her glasses. She's a very pretty lady--dark skin, almond eyes, silky hair. If she hadn't been his psychiatrist, Stiles might have liked to set her up with his father. He can imagine them together, on dates--him taking her home, them laughing over a three course meal instead of a rushed microwavable TV-dinner propped on top of overdue reports. 

"I'm not interested." He wonders if she would continue psychoanalyzing him if she got together with his dad. "By the way, do you do home visits?"

She leans forward and taps her clipboard, ignoring his question. It's really very infuriating. "Why don't you go by your real name, Stiles?"

Stiles stares at her. She hadn't seemed all that stupid, but even teachers at school could figure out why he preferred a nickname by just peeking at his file. "Nevermind," he decides. "Home visits won't be necessary."

"It's important to listen to someone when they're speaking to you. That's what a conversation is, Stiles."

The clock ticks loudly in the background. Stiles counts down the seconds to the end of their session. "Thank you," he says when the hour is up. "See you next week."

She sighs. "I wish you'd work with me. Nothing will change like this. You still can't focus. You still _don't listen._ "

Stiles ignores her.

  
*** * ***   


Stiles gets to school on time every day, despite his Jeep being a colossal piece of crap. He's amazed it doesn't break down , but even that would too interesting a phenomenon for this fuck-boring town in the middle of Beacon County.

During Chemistry, Scott stares out of a window. Stiles stares at the back of Scott's head and counts the number of hairs over three inches long. He gets to fifty-nine before Scott sneezes and disrupts his concentration, and by then Stiles realizes that he doesn't care anymore.

"I heard about some evidence the police might have found," he whispers in the hallway between classes. "They're planning a trap in the woods tonight."

"For the burglar?"

"Shh." Stiles looks around, but no one seems to be listening. "Yeah."

"Didn't they just steal a single glass plate? Nothing interesting about that."

It was teflon, actually, valued at about eight bucks at the local Walmart, but Stiles doesn't want to trivialize what might be the most exciting news he's had to share in weeks. "Whatever. You want to come?"

"Not really."

Nothing happens in Beacon Hills, California. Nothing ever happens to Stiles.

At night he can't sleep. His psychiatrist refuses to prescribe him Ambien, and Melatonin does absolutely nothing. He spends hours roleplaying on the internet, pretending he's a warrior swathed in silk robes and power crackling in his fingers. When he closes his eyes he can almost feel the magic, and the incantations roll out of hands and onto the screen.

He levels up, but their gamemaster quits part-way and so their party fails to complete their mission. Stiles curses and smashes his hand into his keyboard. It cracks, a hairline along the top by he escape key. And his palm bleeds, dripping blood along the part of desk covered in papers and junk he doesn't want to throw out--he might need it all, one day.

He grabs a bandaid, applies disinfectant, and watches the green light on his alarm clock count down the hours, minutes, and seconds until first period.

(Three, seventeen, and forty-nine...eight...seven...)

Nothing ever happens. But Stiles wishes something, _anything_ would.

Before he goes insane.

  


*** * ***  


Scott gets a job after school. It's with a vet--one Stiles hadn't known even existed before Scott had mentioned it--and it pays exactly minimum wage.

Stiles could have used the money. "You should have mentioned it. It could have been the two of us. Together!"

"I didn't know you were interested."

"Lydia has expensive tastes. When I take her out--"

"You know she's dating Jackson, right?"

"--when she _breaks up with Jackson for me_ ," he continues a bit more loudly, frustrated with Scott's myopia, "I need to be able to afford nice dinners. Places that aren't Burger King."

"There's nothing wrong with Burger King." Scott fumbles for his inhaler, prepping for that afternoon's lacrosse practice. Stiles has no idea why he's joined the team--why either of them have, in fact, since neither of them are any good. "I like burgers. Everyone likes burgers. Ideally my girlfriend will like burgers too."

"Yeah well, I didn't ask _you_ out on a date. Your jawline is wonky. It's very unattractive. Still, you should have mentioned my name."

"They were just looking for one assistant. Dr. Deaton took a look at me and said I was a shoe-in. I guess I give off good, animalistic vibes, huh?"

 _This is probably because you look and act like a braindead chimpanzee_ , Stiles thinks. He decides to spare Scott the emotional trauma of this revelation. But the name Deaton doesn't sound familiar in the least bit. "Where did you say the clinic was?"

"Off Woodland Drive. I guess you must never have passed it. I don't think I usually do either--it's not exactly on my way home."

Stiles has never even _heard_ of Woodland Drive. Beacon isn't that big of a town.

It's deliciously weird. "I bet he's creepy," Stiles says with relish. "I bet he has a fucked up past, I bet he's moved here and he's hiding from something, or running away or maybe--"

"If you applied your imagination a little less intensely," a booming voice chides, "you might make first line sometime before you graduate high school."

"Coach," Stiles says sadly, turning around. "I don't think you fully appreciate the importance of imagination in lacrosse. Imaginative plays are winning plays! They're interesting! Exciting! They employ mathematical principles to uncover the secret formulae integral to fantastic performance!"

"Winning plays are the things that result in the ball getting into the net, Stilinski. Something you have great trouble with. Which is why you sit on the bench all season."

Stiles shrugs. "I actually have a trouble with the hulking men standing in front of the goals, but point taken."

"I'm not really hulking," Danny says from around the corner. "I'm built. Fit. There's a difference."

Stiles pets Danny's shoulder fondly. "Of course you are."

  


*** * ***  


"It'd be nice if there were more murders in town," Stiles says to his father one night over dinner. "Or more restaurants that served something that wasn't...this."

"This is a burger," his father says through a mouthful of fries. "It's healthy. It has protein. Unlike murders, which are terrible for you and do not have protein."

"This burger also enough fat, grease, and cholesterol to clog your arteries, increase changes of gallstones, diabetes, high blood pressure--"

"Killjoy."

Stiles sniffs. "I'm just looking out for you." He frowns, staring at the green lettuce sandwiched between bread rolls and a quarter pound of beef. "Unless you're _trying_ to get hospitalized? I do like Scott, you know, even if I don't think Melissa is into you. But you never know! I can ask--don't need to sneak around."

"What are you even _talking_ about?"

Boring, boring, boring. Stiles grabs the paper boat filled with greasy fries and stuffs them all into his own mouth. "Nevermind," he mutters, leaving the table and his dinner behind. "It doesn't matter."

It kind of does. It would be nice to have someone to share the chores with.

  


*** * ***  


Stiles stops taking his medication for a few days and spends the time vibrating out of his body. He explodes in all directions--colors are too bright, noises are too loud, and every muscle spasms out of control.

His psychiatrist threatens to send him elsewhere for stronger treatment and better supervision. His father curses and drinks too much. But nothing changes--Lydia is still dating Jackson, Scott still vanishes after school to a part-time job Stiles knows nothing about, and the dull grind of school thumps on and on and on.

 _Nothing changes_. Stiles stops doing his homework and sleeps through economics. Finstock threatens to boot him off the team, he gets an A in English for his creative essays entirely missing the point of the assignments, and freshman year ends.

Summers are equally as dull in Beacon County. Gas is too expensive for a roadtrip, so Stiles drives to the local library and picks out hundreds of books, pretending he's in India, in Australia, in Forks. He watches Lydia try and hide in a corner, ravenously consuming math textbooks he can't even begin to comprehend, and falls in love with her golden hair all over again, like it's third grade, like he's still entirely unaware of how out of her league he is and will always be.

It'd be nice if it wasn't true, but it is. So instead he watches her, and times his study sessions with hers. On Fridays she leaves early, and while usually he stays, on the last weekend of summer vacation he gives up, frustrated that he hadn't managed to say a single word to her (despite thirteen attempts at casually passing her by and offering her a tissue or cup of coffee or extra sheet of paper), and tosses the book he'd been reading back on a shelf. 

It hadn't been very good anyway. What idiot girl would date a _vampire_ over a _werewolf_?

Sophomore year is exactly the same as freshman year. Stiles and Scott take all the same classes, get fairly similar grades, and give each other identical Christmas gifts.

"I saw you eyeing this game," Scott says, forlorn. 

"I was eyeing it because I thought _you_ might want it, you idiot. _I_ already own it."

They both exchange it for something else. They have dinner together at Burger King afterwards and watch the rain soak through the streets. 

Beacon County isn't even interesting enough for _snow_.

  


*** * ***  


On Saturday, someone dies. Stiles knows because he's long since figured out how to tune into the police radio, and it's just a matter of being bored enough to listen to hours of static in the hopes of snagging a lead.

On Sunday, President's Day, Stiles sees his father leave the house after dark and overhears dispatch calling in a huge force--every cop is dragged into the office, and state police is radioed for backup. Stiles dashes to Scott's house where the idiot almost clubs him with a bat and convinces him to come play detective in the woods where his father finds and grounds him.

And that's the greatest part, of course, Stiles thinks on the way home. A body would just call for a murder investigation--but half a body is a mystery. He fidgets so badly in the car that after his father is done lecturing him about the importance of privacy, he asks (softly, very softly) about his Adderall. Stiles promises he's been taking all forty milligrams. 

He takes a bit extra that night, even so. Stiles has always believed in karma.

On Monday morning, school resumes, Scott claims that he's been bitten by a wolf--something Stiles knows is impossible, since he'd been reading about animal populations in California ever since he'd found out that Lydia liked them. But Scott is not the brightest tool in the shed, and by first period, a(n admittedly quite attractive) transfer student walks into class with three inch heels, decimating Scott's very limited attention span. She's new. _San Francisco_ -new. 

Nothing new happens in Beacon. No one moves in, no one leaves. It's a small town with small people and small problems.

Scott, the severe asthmatic makes first line, sniffs out a sliver of mint mojito gum Stiles hadn't even known was in his front jacket pocket. And Stiles jokes about lycanthropy, vaguely remembering summer afternoons in the library peeking at Lydia's ruffled blouses over the lurid descriptions of supernatural beings in with sparkly skin in _Twilight_.

Wolves, after all, are much cooler than bloodsucking parasites.

On Monday afternoon, Derek Hale, only survivor of the Hale family fire, reappears in the woods. He wears black leather, and a blacker expression--everything Stiles had remembered from what he'd seen in the confidential police files hidden in his father's office. It's uncanny. But Derek had allegedly moved to New York, leaving the shell of his family home behind. Allegedly, there was nothing here for him anymore. Allegedly the move had been a permanent one.

Stiles doesn't believe in coincidences, only in convergences. And when the lab analysis comes back noting the presence of animal hair on the body of the dead girl found in the woods over winter break, it's just another card in the tower that's been taking shape all along.

Of _course_ it's a wolf. Stiles always thought it'd be more interesting that way. Much less sparkle.

His psychiatrist leaves town that week, and discontinues Stiles's treatment. "He's fine," the email reads. "He does not require my services. Thank you very much."

The wording is almost too perfectly familiar. 

Stiles calls up Scott to celebrate, but of course Scott is busy picking up Allison, too busy doing everything a werewolf absolutely should not be doing a full moon. Scott lets his phone go to voicemail. In the old days--in the pre-Allison days, in the pre-first fucking line days, Scott was always around and always available and always took Stiles seriously.

He confronts him about the werewolves, but fights with him about the dissolution of their friendship.

"I wonder if there are more," he says quietly, watching Scott storm out of his bedroom unpinning himself from his wall. "A whole pack more."

  


*** * ***  


At the party, right under the light of the full moon, Scott stumbles past him looking peaky and disoriented. When Stiles follows him home, watching Allison drive safely away, he realizes that Scott will never be his anymore--or, at least, never in the same way as he had been. The door is between them, Stiles leaning in, Scott leaning back.

"I know who it is," Scott says, breathing heavily, voice muffled. "The werewolf who bit me. It's Derek Hale."

Of course. Derek Hale, the boy who is just a bit older, wears black leather jackets and drives a Camero. Derek Hale, the boy with a perfectly even jawline. 

The boy who had driven Allison home. The boy who might be a killer--who could very easily become one again, given the chance.

Stiles considers it. Scott pants frantically again the wall. _She's the best thing that's ever happened to him,_ Stiles realizes. _Including me._

It's a painful revelation. Scott slams his door shut, locking it behind him. And Stiles decides that Allison cannot, _must not_ die.

  
*** * ***  


Later, much later, after Peter Hale has been burned to death and the Argents have become public enemy number one, Stiles realizes that he's long since decided that while Derek _would_ have to be a total asshole to be even mildly interesting and continually entertaining, he _couldn't_ have ever been a murderer. He's powerful and terrifying, but he's deeply scarred. And underneath all of that fibrous tissue, he's just as good a person as Scott McCall.

Or possibly, Stiles imagines, watching his best friend wind arms around his girlfriend's waist, just possibly even _better_.

**Author's Note:**

> thank you to kate (kayevelyn) for introducing me to teen wolf (/ruining my life) and telling me that this didn't absolutely suck. for correcting my canon and reminding me that a truck is only a truck when it isn't a jeep. thank you, pretty girl with the red tote and blonde ponytails. this one's for you ♥.


End file.
